


The Quillians

by talkingtothesky



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Aliens, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-10
Updated: 2008-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-03 05:14:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10236653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkingtothesky/pseuds/talkingtothesky
Summary: Jack makes friends with some tiny fluffy baby aliens.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Backdated posting. I believe the opening line was a prompt from something, but I can't remember where.

The tinkling sound filled the air, echoing through the building.

Gwen looked up, eyes wide open and searching for the source of the noise. She scanned the roof as best she could, but it was thick with cobwebs and rafters zigzagged from post to post, forming a maze of rotting wood and splinters. And there was no kind of bell, or clock, or alarm that she could find. It must have been a device of some kind.

 

“Hey, Gwen!” Jack called from high above her.

 

_What?_ “How did you get all the way up there?” Jack was standing on one of the uppermost rafters, balancing with ease quite possibly the thinnest piece of old wood that Gwen had ever seen. “Jack, you’ll fall!”

 

“So?” They could speak normally, no need to shout. The old hall amplified their voices so that they bounced off every surface with startling clarity.

 

_Fair point._ “So, even if you can’t die, I’d rather not spend my evening dragging you great lump all the way back to the Hub!”

 

“I’d recover.”

 

“All the bones in your body? At once? I doubt it.”

 

“You’d be surprised.”

 

Gwen sighed. _Typical show-off._ “Fine! If you fall, I’ll leave you here and you can hobble back on your own.”

 

“You wouldn’t.”

 

“You’d be surprised. Now, what have you got there?”

 

“What would you say this is, Gwen?” Jack spread his arms wide, gesturing the large expanse of intertwining pathways, almost like the branches of a tree. Very dusty branches.

 

“I’d say…something like a nest, perhaps?”

 

Jack clicked his fingers at her; “Spot on!”

 

“So you’re standing right in the middle of something’s nest.”

 

“Yep.”

 

“And you’re not in the slightest bit worried about that.”

 

“Nah.”

 

“I thought not.” Another long-suffering sigh. Gwen had learnt from experience that there was just no getting Jack Harkness to talk sense most of the time.

 

“The noise we heard, do you know where it’s coming from?” She asked him, trying to get back to the job in hand.

 

“Three feet to my right. That’s left, to you.”

 

Gwen peered carefully into the darkness, straining her eyes to see what Jack was referring to. She couldn’t see anything except Jack, illuminated by the light from his wrist device, which he was now playing with. Even from this far off he looked handsome as hell. _Mind on the job, Gwen!_

 

She saw him reach into one of the many pockets of his coat and pull something out. When light emerged in the cold space she realised it was a torch. “Here,” Jack said, pointing the torch towards his right so Gwen could see.

 

It was beautiful. It _was_ a nest; curled up inside a basket of branches were an assortment of what looked like baby birds. They were white and fluffy, sparkling like snow under the gentle light. They also had tiny translucent wings, Gwen noticed as one of them flitted up from its resting place and zoomed around the nest, tinkling happily. The forty or so others, who appeared to have been sleeping prior to this disruption, now also peeked out of their basket through tiny blinking eyes.

 

Gwen found her voice. “Oh my, they’re wonderful! What are they?”

 

“They’re Quillians. They inhabit a planet called Roxavelraptogon since their own home was destroyed. Only now they seem to be coming to Earth more and more. People mistake them for pixies, or butterflies or dandelion pollen. However, they can fly very quickly; very rarely would you catch a glimpse of them except for when they’re resting or do not feel endangered.”

 

“But why was their planet destroyed? They couldn’t hurt a thing!”

 

Jack shook his head. “End of the last Great Time War. The Daleks sent out a pulse of lethal cosmic energy, destroying everything that got in its way. It didn’t matter that the Quillians weren’t the intended target; they got hurt anyway. A few managed to escape, due to their ability to fly so quickly, but I suspect these are some of the only remaining survivors.”

 

“So who were the intended targets?”

 

“You don’t need to know.”

 

“Jack, please…”

 

“The Time Lords,” Jack said wearily, turning away.

 

And that was when Gwen had a brainwave. “The Doctor was one of them, wasn’t he.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Then how did he survive?”

 

“I don’t know, but he’s the only one, “Jack whispered, and when he looked down at her again, Gwen was startled to find that his eyes were brimming with tears.

 

Gwen played with her fingers nervously, wanting to say something that might console him but at the same time knowing that this went far beyond her comprehension. Empathy could only go so far, and Gwen found herself selfishly relieved that she couldn’t feel the kind of pain that Jack must be experiencing.

 

Suddenly there was a great fluttering of tiny wings as a cloud of fluffy creatures rose into the air and descended on Jack. For a moment Gwen thought their harmless appearance had belied them, but she watched as they began to burrow into his many pockets, tucking themselves into furry spheres against his neck, tickling his chin and nipping playfully at his ears. Gwen heard Jack give a deep chuckle as his melancholic mood subsided at this overwhelming show of affection. He gently plucked one of them away from attempting to climb inside his ear and set it gently on his palm, watching it with a small smile. “Well, it’s a good job there are survivors, huh?” The ball of fluff just bounced up and down on his hand happily, before trying to climb through Jack’s fingers.

 

By the end of this display, Gwen was the one with tears in her eyes.

 

***

 

It had taken a while for Jack to retrieve all the excited little Quillians and set them safely back in their nest. He had finally come down from the rafters, and was now brushing dust from the tails of his coat. Gwen was glad she no longer had to crane her neck to see him.

 

“They seemed to like you,” Gwen remarked as she helped him clean the coat.

 

Jack shook his head, reaching round to pick fluff from his shoulders. “They like the way I smell.”

 

At Gwen’s raised eyebrow and general look of incomprehension, he elaborated; “Fifty-first century pheromones. I’m the closest smell to their home planet they’ll find for millennia.”

 

Gwen started as something plopped into her hand. She saw a Quillian clamber out of the coat pocket she had just been brushing and land in her hand, then saw that there were two fluff balls dancing around each other on her palm. “Jack, we’ve got some more of them.”

 

Jack finally looked up from his precious coat. “Oh, damn. I’m not going all the way up there again. If you can get them to fly they’ll be fine, but they’re notoriously difficult for getting to follow instructions.”

 

Gwen smirked. “As we’ve just seen. They wouldn’t leave you once they’d found you, would they?” _Like someone else I could mention,_ she thought, and then wondered where that came from.

 

“Well, we can’t leave them down here, they won’t survive.”

 

“Oh Jack, can we keep them?” Gwen exclaimed as she tickled one of them on the head and it jumped up to meet her, almost like a cat would. The Quillians were barely heavier than air: if it weren’t for their ticklish fur and tiny feet Gwen might not have realised she were holding anything at all.

 

“Ah, no.” Jack said steadily, though he reached over fondly to tickle the other one. They were glowing softly in the dark now, pure glorious white against the black. It was also very cold, and Gwen finally realised that her fingers were frozen as shivers flooded through her body.

 

To her thorough embarrassment, Jack seemed to notice. She hoped it wasn’t too obvious she was blushing as he picked up the now dust-free coat and settled it around her shoulders. “You okay?” He asked softly, placing his hands either side of hers to warm them. “I’m sorry about earlier, I shouldn’t have told you that stuff. You don’t need that on your mind.”

 

“Neither do you.” Gwen said firmly. “It’s not that; I wanted you to tell me. It’d do you good; to actually talk to someone for once in a while.”

 

“Then what is it?”

 

“I think I’m…” He was gazing so earnestly at her, ready to listen to anything she had to say that for a moment Gwen almost thought she could-“I’m just cold.” Then Gwen finally noticed that the Quillians had disappeared from her hand. She glanced up and sure enough two gently fluttering lights had returned to their nest.

 

“Come on.” Jack let go of her hands and put his arm around her back as he guided her towards the exit. They walked on out of the darkness together.


End file.
